March 3, 2015 - Freescale is designing its next generation microprocessor, the iMX7, on 28nm FD-SOI, EETimes has just revealed. This was in an article by Chief International Correspondent Junko Yoshida entitled Freescale, Cisco, Ciena Give Nod to FD-SOI (read it here). Freescale microcontroller SVP & GM Geoff Lees told EETimes the chip’s designed for “'secure' IoT applications, including... Read more »

March 3, 2015 - NXP recently expanded its GreenChip line of SOI-based power supply controller ICs with the new TEA1832TS (click here for more product info). Here at ASN, we first covered this line back in 2011 (see that Buzz here), and NXP’s been adding to it ever since. - Smart, green power supplies are one of the most important ways that designers reduce the power consumption of modern electronics.... Read more »

February 23, 2015 - SiTime's SOI-MEMS solution is a key part of a new realtime health and fitness tracking solution from MegaChips called “frizz”. MegaChips has announced a partnership with Bosch Sensortec to provide a complete reference design for use of frizz in smartphones, wearables and other personal devices allowing consumers to monitor their activities in real time (read the press release here).... Read more »

February 17, 2015 - A recent post by Eric Esteve on SemiWiki, entitled Sony Endorses FD-SOI to Attack Wearable & IoT (click here to read it) delves into some of the technical and design details of Sony's Tokyo presentation on a 1mW 28nm FD-SOI GPS. (The full presentation is available here. Or click here to read the ASN overview of all the Tokyo presentations.) For the design community, IP expert Esteve... Read more »

February 17, 2015 - ARM is working on FD-SOI libraries, and the ecosystem is now there, says David Manners of Electronics Weekly. In two separate pieces, he cited conversations with ARM EVP Pete Hutton. In Microcontrollers Become Major at ARM (click here to read it), Hutton confirmed both the FD-SOI libraries and customers. In Cinderella (click here to read it), Manners looked at all the FD-SOI pieces –... Read more »

February 9, 2015 - SemiWiki blogger Paul McLellan has posted another excellent FD-SOI piece, this time covering Samsung's presentation at the recent FD-SOI/RF-SOI Workshop in Tokyo (click here to read it). Within 24 hours of posting, it had already been shared over 60 times on LinkedIn. As always, McLellan puts the presentation in perspective for the design community, calling out key... Read more »

February 9, 2015 - (Courtesy: ST, designreuse) - A video made during ST's FD-SOI presentation at IP-SoC 2014 has now been posted by designreuse on YouTube (you can see it here). Over 40 minutes long, it details the European THINGS2DO project, which includes almost 50 partners working on the FD-SOI ecosystem. (This follows onto the PLACES2BE project, which is finishing up this year.) It underscores the... Read more »

February 8, 2015 - In a SemiEngineering piece entitled FD-SOI meets the IoT, Executive Editor Ann Steffora Mutschler talked to a couple of design houses working on FD-SOI IoT projects. Synapse Design has taped out multiple chips, and has more projects underway, they told her, with reports of impressive power savings. In close collaboration with a foundry, OpenSilicon is working on an FD-SOI test chip that... Read more »

February 2, 2015 - A new EETimes article entitled Sony Joins FD-SOI Club by Chief International Correspondent Junko Yoshida has created a tremendous buzz (click here to read it). The piece covers Sony's presentation at the latest RF/FD-SOI workshop in Tokyo (many of the presentation are now posted here). Sony described their design experience with porting a GPS chip to 28nm FD-SOI, which resulted in a... Read more »

February 2, 2015 - A 22nm SOI chip is at the heart of IBM’s new z13 mainframe, one of the most sophisticated computer systems ever built. (Augusto Menezes/Feature Photo Service for IBM) - The recently announced IBM z13, which is billed as the world’s fastest microprocessor, is built on SOI (of course!) (read the press release here). - At the heart of the latest in the IBM z-series of mainframes, the... Read more »

January 22, 2015 - Paul Boudre has been named CEO of Soitec. - Paul Boudre has been named CEO of SOI wafer leader, Soitec (see financial press release here). The company also announced its plans to re-focus on its core electronics business unit. - Q3 sales were 48 million euros, up 45% over last year. The sale of 200mm wafers (which are used in chips for RF-SOI and smartpower) were almost doubled from... Read more »

January 12, 2015 - A new interactive WebEx webinar on FD-SOI design sponsored by CMC Microsystems has been posted. Entitled Design and Characterization of Circuits and Devices in the ST 28nm Fully-Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FD SOI) (click hereto view it), it features two presentations by University of Toronto professors based on their recent experiences with circuit design in the ST’s 28nm FDSOI... Read more »

Soitec has reached high-volume manufacturing of our new Enhanced Signal Integrity™ (eSI) substrates, enabling cost-effective and high-performance RF devices. They are the first ‘trap-rich’ type of material in full production, and are already used in manufacturing by most of the leading RF foundries in front-end modules for 4G and LTE mobile computing and communication applications. […]

Soitec and a team from UCL have been working together to identify the technological opportunities to further improve the high-frequency performance of SOI substrates. Based on the wideband characterization techniques developed at UCL, the RF characteristics of high-resistivity (HR) SOI substrates have been analyzed, modeled and greatly improved in order to meet the specifications of […]

The new IEEE S3S conference promised rich content, as it merged both The IEEE International SOI Conference and the IEEE Subthreshold Microelectronics Conference, completed by an additional track on 3D Integration. The result was an excellent conference, with outstanding presentations from key players in each of the three topics covered. This quality was reflected in the increased attendance: almost 50% more […]

In STMicroelectronics Q313 Earnings Conference Call, CEO/President Carlo Bozotti and CMO/CTO Jean-Marc Chery (who’s also EVP and GM of the Embedded Processing Solutions Segment and Vice Chairman of the Corporate Strategic Committee) had excellent things to say about FD-SOI and RF-SOI. Here are some take-aways from the SeekingAlpha transcript: Carlo Bozotti: “We continue to demonstrate […]